Précis
Women and higher
education
During the last 40 years, the number of people going to college has increased dramatically throughout the
world. Given that many studies have
documented the widespread labor
market benefits of higher education,
the increase is hardly surprising.
What could be considered surprising, however, is that the increase
has been mostly among women. In
1970, far fewer women went to college than men, except in a few of the
richer countries. But by 2010, the
number of women who had attained
a college education was greater than
that of men in 67 of 120 countries
around the world, including 17
relatively poor countries. In an article in the May 2010 issue of the
American Economic Review entitled
“The Market for College Graduates
and the Worldwide Boom in Higher
Education for Women,” Nobel laureate economist Gary S. Becker and
colleagues William H.J. Hubbard
and Kevin M. Murray attempt to
explain this phenomenon.
Becker and his colleagues present
a model of the optimal investment in
higher education for a person. In addition to increased lifetime earnings,
the model’s determinants include
the benefits of a college education
for a person’s health, marital prospects, investments in his or her children, and propensity for coping with
unexpected events. By each of these
measures, people with more education generally are better off than
those with less education. The decision to go to college also depends on
the costs involved, including tuition,
forgone earnings, and, crucially, the
prospect of doing well in college.
The authors attribute the increase in
70 Monthly Labor Review • September 2010
higher education to greater benefits
relative to costs from attaining a college education. In other words, the
“rate of return” to higher education
has increased in recent decades—in
the United States and in many other
countries—and although the overall benefits are still greater for men
than for women, the gap has narrowed substantially.
After examining the effects of a
university education on individuals,
the authors turn to an equilibrium
analysis of the market for collegeeducated women and men. Because
the returns to attaining a college
education have increased over time,
both the demand for and the supply
of college graduates have increased
as well. Becker and his colleagues
argue that more women than men
currently go to college because
women’s elasticity of supply with
respect to earnings is greater than
men’s. Women tend to have greater
“noncognitive abilities,” such as selfdiscipline, perseverance, and social
skills than men, so women’s costs
of attending college are lower than
men’s. In addition, women appear
to have less variability than men
in both cognitive and noncognitive
abilities, which increases their elasticity of supply. Thus, the increase
in demand for college graduates has
induced more women than men to
go to college, even when the benefits
are the same for both.
Students’ studying time
declining
The results of several time-use surveys indicate that college students
in recent years have spent less time
studying than students in previous
years. In their working paper titled
“The Falling Time Cost of College:
Evidence from Half a Century of
Time Use Data,” professors Philip
S. Babcock and Mindy Marks
present data from multiple sources
showing the decline in college students’ study times between 1961 and
2004 (NBER Working Paper 15954,
April 2010). The results reveal that
full-time students devoted a mean
of 40 hours per week to studying in
1961, compared with 27 hours per
week in 2003. Additionally, in 1961,
67 percent of students studied 20 or
more hours per week; by 2003 that
number had decreased to 20 percent.
One survey reports that time spent
studying declined by 4.7 hours per
week from 1961 to 1981, another
survey reports a decline of 1.7 hours
per week from 1988 to 2004, and a
third reports a decline of 11.1 hours
per week between 1961 and 2004.
Interestingly, declines in study
time exist in all demographic groups
within the categories of race, sex, and
family background, among others.
Although the demographic composition of college students has changed
over time, the authors state that these
compositional changes do not appear
to explain the trend of diminishing
study times. In the recent respondent groups, there are more women,
working students, and students with
college-educated fathers. Declines in
study time were also observed among
all majors surveyed and among fouryear colleges of varying sizes, levels
of selectivity, and degree structures.
Though it is beyond the scope of
their study to determine reasons for
these declines, Babcock and Marks
discuss a number of theories as to
why hours spent studying may have
declined in recent decades. They
mention technologies that make
students more productive, students’
increasing likelihood of holding a
job while in school, and evolving
institutional standards as speculative explanations. The authors argue
that, if effort is a meaningful input
to the educational process, then de-
clines in study time are a signal of
a decline in human capital production. They also assert that the data
may suggest that students’ opportunity cost of attending college has
declined over the years. In addition,
they present data which dismiss the
argument that declines in study time
are the result of students spending
more years attending college.
Where are you publishing your
research?
The Monthly Labor Review welcomes articles on the
labor force, labor-management relations, business
conditions, industry productivity, compensation,
occupational safety and health, demographic trends,
and other economic developments. Papers should be
factual and analytical, not polemical, in tone. For
guidelines on how to submit papers, go to
www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/guidelines.htm.
Potential articles, as well as comments on
material published in the Review, should be
submitted to:
Executive Editor
Monthly Labor Review
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics
Room 2850
Washington, DC 20212
Telephone: (202) 691–7911
Fax: (202) 691–5908
E-mail: [email protected]
Monthly Labor Review • September 2010 71